Grazed from TheGeekStuff. Author: Editorial Staff.

What is a Cloud? Depending on who you are talking to, you’ll get different answers to this question. A technically savvy end-user might define cloud as the ability to store and access personal or business data on-demand, over the internet, without having to store it locally.

A business might define cloud as an IT infrastructure that can be rented on-demand, instead of purchasing IT equipment to run their enterprise business applications. A stakeholder might define cloud as a flexible execution environment of resources involving one or more stakeholders and providing a metered service at multiple levels up to a specified quality benchmark…

Grazed from Newser. Author: Ryan Nakashima.

In Satya Nadella’s first quarterly earnings release as chief executive, Microsoft Corp. on Thursday posted earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street expectations, offering new justification for the CEO’s focus on cloud computing. Factoring out special items from a year ago, revenue in the January-March quarter grew 8 percent.

Nadella, who replaced longtime CEO Steve Ballmer in February, said in a statement that the quarter’s results "demonstrate the strength of our business, as well as the opportunities we see in a mobile-first, cloud-first world." Microsoft’s stock rose $1.09, or 2.7 percent, to $40.95 in after-hours trading after the results were released. That followed a 17-cent gain to $39.86 in the regular session…

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Chris Kanaracus.

Salesforce.com was so impressed by the Mayday customer support feature that Amazon.com rolled out for its Kindle Fire HDX tablets that it’s now working to create its own version. Mayday allows HDX users who find themselves stumped to simply touch a button and be connected to a support representative via video chat.

The upcoming Salesforce1 Service Cloud SOS provides an SDK (software development kit) that companies can use to embed a similar button into any native iOS or Android mobile application, said Larry Robinson, vice president of product management. Companies using SOS, however, would have to be subscribers to Salesforce’s Service Cloud customer-service software…

Grazed from Forrester. Author: James Staten.

The public cloud services market exited 2013 with $58 billion in revenues according to Forrester estimates. Strong growth and maturity over the past three years since our last forecast has put fuel in its tank which will push this market to $191 billion by 2020. While the last several years can best be characterized as exploratory for most enterprises, cloud services and cloud platforms are now an undeniable part of the IT landscape.

And based on Forrester enterprise CIO inquiries, the shift has begun from exploration of cloud as a potential option, to rationalization of cloud services within the overall IT portfolio. And this shift to the second stage of technology adoption yields significantly higher market revenues than the exploratory phase. Clearly the bulk of this market’s revenues come from Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions which accounted for $36 billion in revenue in 2013…

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Alistair Barr and Anna Prior.

Amazon.com Inc. reported another quarter of skimpy profits as the Web-commerce giant spent heavily on shipping, cloud computing and newer initiatives that it hopes will keep revenue growing quickly. Amazon reported net income of $108 million, or 23 cents a share, compared with $82 million, or 18 cents a share, a year earlier. Analysts were expecting a per-share profit of 23 cents, according to Thomson Reuters.

Sales increased 23% to $19.74 billion. Amazon in January had estimated sales would range between $18.2 billion and $19.9 billion. Analysts were expecting $19.43 billion. Operating expenses, meanwhile, rose 23% to $19.6 billion, and the company’s operating margin narrowed to 0.7% from 1.1% a year earlier…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Sedar Yegulalp.

Never let it be said that Amazon is falling behind in cloud computing. The newest wrinkle with AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a twist on a long-standing technology, Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon’s application deployment and management system for all of its cloud services. Beanstalk has now been upgraded to support deploying and launching applications containerized through Docker.

Any Docker image can be deployed this way, whether from Docker’s public repository or from one’s own private store of containers. Users are left to create a .JSON file that describes the image to be used and a few other notations, and even that’s not mandatory because an existing Dockerfile, as they are called, will typically work as-is…

Grazed from CloudComputingToday. Author: Arnal Dayaratna, Ph.D.

Today, PernixData announces enhancements to PernixData FVP, its software-based storage solution for enabling dramatic improvements in the scale-out storage capability of IT infrastructures without the addition of hardware-based storage resources. In its initial rollout, PernixData FVP used hypervisor software to aggregate server side flash to create a “scale-out data tier for the acceleration of primary storage.”

The aggregation of server side flash creates a clustered acceleration tier that enables improvements in application latency and storage performance. The clustered acceleration tier empowers application administrators to optimize application performance without changing the workflows or raw storage capacity of the infrastructure in which the application is deployed…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Xform Computing, leader in open-source based cloud-streaming apps for mobile devices, announces its Dual-Screen technology is included in the latest update of the AlwaysOnPC App in the iTunes App Store. The AlwaysOnPC app delivers a cloud-based desktop computer to mobile devices. This latest Dual-Screen innovation lets mobile users extend their AlwaysOnPC experience beyond their device to a nearby HDTV screen using Apple TV’s Airplay Display feature.

The iPad-to-Apple-TV connection is wireless, so no cables are required. When Dual-Screen mode is activated, the AlwaysOnPC desktop apps are displayed on the large, clear HDTV screen. Users then have the entire screen of their iPad or iPhone as a touch-pad and keyboard, to control and use the AlwaysOnPC features…

Grazed from ScientificComputing. Author: Editorial Staff.

This year’s ISC Cloud conference will be the fifth in the series and will continue the tradition of bringing experts and users from industry and academia to foster collaboration and innovation in the field of cloud computing. The conference will be held in Heidelberg at the Marriott Hotel from September 29 to 30, 2014, followed by ISC Big Data, from October 1–2. Registration will be available in early June.

Program Highlights

Hands-on Tutorial: Accessing and Using HPC Clouds for Science and Engineering: The number of cloud providers is growing steadily, and it’s challenging for users to identify the best-suited providers for their application and business requirements. ISC shall invite different providers to the tutorial to introduce and guide users through the process of accessing and using their cloud resources, and teach them how this can benefit their work and organization as a whole. Previous cloud experiment clients will also join this tutorial to share their lessons learned and offer valuable recommendations for new users…

Grazed from CSOOnline. Author: Antone Gonsalves.

A security vendor claims Amazon Web Services provided a cloud-computing customer with an unpatched version of Windows that resulted in a malware infection. Bkav, a network security company based in Vietnam, started investigating the incident after the AWS customer complained that Bkav software had failed to catch the data-stealing malware.

Bkav claims that AWS, a division of e-retailer Amazon, initially handed the customer a version of Windows Server 2003 that had not been patched since October 2009. Over the last five years, 300 vulnerabilities have been reported in the operating system, according to CVE Details…